We’ve recently launched a new feature on Reuters.com that allows users to comment on stories in the U.S. Politics section.

We’ve done this to help foster a healthy debate on the issues raised in those stories, as the United States moves toward one of the most significant elections in decades.

The best debates are those that are lively, substantive and civil — and that’s what we’re seeking here. Please, no profanity or personal attacks, and absolutely no hate speech.

To comment on a politics story you need to be registered with reuters.com. If you’re logged into the site and ready to comment this is the guidance you’ll see:

“Help us advance this story. Provide relevant links or share your insights using our comment box. Reuters moderates all comments so please be considerate and help us by reporting any abuse you find.”

When it comes to reporting abuse we list the following categories: obscenity/vulgarity, hate speech, personal attack, advertising/spam and copyright/plagiarism. If you find a comment objectionable because you disagree with the argument then you should respond with a comment rather than using the ‘report abuse’ link.

So join the discussion and have your say. And let me know what you think of this feature.

Dean Wright
Editor, Media

This week we introduced a new feature on reuters.com — a recommend button on all our articles. The idea is that if you like what you’re reading then you can simply click on the button to register your approval, so letting other readers and the editors here at reuters.com know what’s good on the site.

In addition to being able to see how many other readers have recommended the particular story you’re looking at, we also collect the data to show you the most recommended stories across the site in the past 24 hours. So now you can not only see which stories on reuters.com have been most read, but also those that have been both read and recommended. (And if you’re wondering what the difference might be then look at our our most popular module on our articles to compare the two measures.)

This is one way in which we are seeking to harness the intelligence of the Reuters audience to help readers navigate the information on our site. It’s part of a rolling program of enhancements designed to open up the site to our readers and I’ll have more to tell you about this program in the coming weeks and months. In the mean time, if you have any thoughts on this new feature don’t hesitate to get in touch with me via the comments box below.

Dean Wright is Editor, Reuters Media

 
I go to a lot of conferences that explore issues in the news industry and a common reaction is one of déjà vu. The topics - and the participants - seem maddeningly familiar:

- Mainstream media need to appreciate the value of the blogosphere. Hmm, that sounds familiar.

- Citizen journalists will make professionals obsolete. Not again.

- Newspaper circulation and advertising are in trouble and we have to do something about it. This just in.

So it was refreshing to participate in Broadcasts recent conference on The Future of News in London, where top broadcast journalists I hadnt met discussed issues that havent been talked to death.

Among the highlights for me:

- A debate over whether journalists who are being kidnapped, assaulted and killed at a record pace– deserve special protection under laws and treaties. A panel, led by Rodney Pinder of the International News Safety Institute, grappled with such questions as this: Do journalists deserve special protection any more than, say, medical aid workers?

- Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al-Jazeera English, describing in gripping detail the technical and political issues involved in getting his network off the ground. And this interesting bit: Sixty percent of the traffic to the networks website comes from the United States.

And, of course, there was the panel I sat on that explored how news organizations are - and should be - responding to changes in news consumption by focusing more on multimedia.

Multimedia is one of those words that mean everything and nothing. And Im convinced our users dont think of it all. What they want is a good story, told in the most appropriate way, using the most appropriate media: words, pictures, video, graphics, interactivity. For them, multimedia is the air they breathe.

To respond to this breaking down of walls among different forms of media, we in the news business need to be creating fusion newsrooms, where television journalists, picture journalists, text journalists and interactive journalists mesh together to create true multimedia products. My panel agreed that the skills needed to create these different forms of media are not interchangeable and that we will always need specialists.

But the new generation of journalists is like our new generation of users: They grew up in a multimedia world and are more comfortable crossing lines. In fact, like our users, many dont even see the lines.

Dean Wright is Editor, Reuters Media

Who can forget the deadly tsunami of December 2004, the London bombings of July 2005, the fury and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. Gulf Coast in August and September, 2005?

In all those events, some of the most compelling images were taken by amateur photographers and videographers. The same can be said for some events this year, including the arrest outside a New York nightclub of Curtis Jackson, better known in the rap world as 50 Cent, and the crash of a small plane piloted by New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle into a Manhattan apartment building.

Now Reuters and Yahoo are announcing a strategic alliance to solicit user-generated news photos and videos, publish them on Reuters.com and syndicate them to Reuters media outlets worldwide. Were starting this week with photos and will add videos later. Heres how it will work: If you see a news event, simply send the picture to You Witness, either by emailing it to pics@reuters.com or visiting the You Witness site at www.reuters.com/youwitness. Reuters editors will review the pictures and select the most newsworthy images for publication on Reuters.com. The very highest quality pictures may be purchased by Reuters and distributed on our professional wire.

Our worldwide professional staff and regular stringer photographers will remain at the center of our pictures service. Their talent and their special eye is crucial for a high-quality picture operation. But non-professionals bring their unique point of view and angle, enhancing and adding diversity to our content. In a sense, all the world are potential stringers.

So as youre thinking about taking news photographs, think about what constitutes a good picture.

Most importantly, it will be of interest to a wide audience. It may depict an event in the news: a train crash, a clash in the streets, deliriously happy fans the moment the big game is won.

Or it may not be of a strictly ‘news’ event. It could be an out-of-the-ordinary moment in time in an otherwise ordinary day. Something that has novelty and impact. For example, a model falling over her huge heels on the catwalk, or a fox running up Downing Street, or a fire station catching fire, or a mouse hitching a lift on the back of a toad during a flood.

It may be unique. A picture that no one else took has much more news value than one taken alongside a rank of other photographers.

A good news picture will tell a story without words. It will have context by showing the surrounding scene, or show the emotion on the faces of the people in the picture.

Whatever the content, a news picture can lose its value in a short space of time. News events move quickly, and the shot of a mini tornado you took last week may have been destined for the front page when you took it, but of no interest to a newspaper or a website a week later. There are exceptions if the event is of huge significance and rarity. For example, a photo of a tsunami wave could still be of great interest days after it struck.

And please, when you are taking photos for submission to Reuters, do not break the law in any way, harass individuals, put yourselves or other people in danger or obstruct the work of emergency services.

Were looking forward to seeing your pictures

Thomas Szlukovenyi, Global Pictures News Editor, and Dean Wright, Managing Editor and Senior Vice President, Consumer Services.